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Study Guide
Certified Professional Innovator
Practitioner Level
In
Design Thinking
Rev 3
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Table of Contents
About this Study Guide ........................................................................................................................... 3
What is design thinking and human centered design? ........................................................................... 4
History of Design Thinking ...................................................................................................................... 5
Science, industrialization, production and now the conceptual age ....................................................... 8
Myths and realities of design thinking .................................................................................................... 9
Design Thinking as a Process ................................................................................................................. 10
Relationship to industrial design ....................................................................................................... 13
What is innovation and the role design thinking plays? .................................................................... 15
Design Innovation ................................................................................................................................. 16
Chapter 4 Ten Roles People Can Play .................................................................................................... 21
Chapter 5 –Personal Creativity ............................................................................................................. 22
Chapter 6: The Creative Corporation .................................................................................................... 25
Chapter 12 Ethnography ....................................................................................................................... 27
Chapter 13 Creativity Tools ................................................................................................................... 28
Chapter 15 Mind-Mapping.................................................................................................................... 33
Chapter 19 – Lead User Analysis ........................................................................................................... 34
Chapter 26 – Crowdsourcing................................................................................................................. 36
Chapter 27 – Open Innovation .............................................................................................................. 38
Chapter 29 –Eureka! What insight is and How to Achieve It ................................................................. 39
Bibliography .............................................................................................................................................. 41
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About this Study Guide
IAOIP certifications are based primarily on the science of innovation body of knowledge represented in
the Global Innovation Science Handbook (1st ED). This book is referred to as the GISH. The Handbook was
prepared by many leading practitioners, researchers, and authors working, teaching, and consulting in
this exciting and business-critical field. While no single book can truly claim to contain all information
within any field of study, the GISH is a wealth of information covering most of the important knowledge
needed to develop a useful understanding of the growing and developing field of science of innovation.
This Study Guide is designed to help you, the professional innovator, prepare for the certification exam
in Design Thinking. This fascinating field is the formulation of what some people and firms have been
doing quite successfully for many years. It is now generally acknowledged that this subject has
developed sufficiently to represent a subset of the innovation process that can be documented, taught,
and routinely expressed. This certification is one way to gain the professional recognition of your level of
knowledge in this field.
This study guide uses the GISH as its main reference source. The GISH does not have a chapter
specifically dedicated to Design Thinking in its current edition. This Study Guide presents information
from various GISH chapters that contain information generally accepted to be part of the body of
knowledge around the subject of Design Thinking along with material from the chapter devoted to
design innovation. Please refer to the original text for the best understanding of the material condensed
in this Study Guide. Where needed, this Study Guide is supplemented by material from appropriate
articles, books, and research to develop a deeper level of knowledge about this specific subject.
There are many books by those who practice some form of design thinking and who will claim their
method is best. IAOIP focuses its work on the science of innovation and does not endorse any particular
method by any specific individual or firm.
Design thinking, sometimes called human centered design, is best when the methods chosen represent
the often unique combination that works best for the individual, team, organization, business, and,
above all, the customer, who is the ultimate judge and user of any design thinking output.
This study guide is exactly that – a guide – and is not a substitute for the GISH or the in-depth and
continuous learning that is the hallmark of the true professional in a science-driven field.
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What is design thinking and human centered design?
“Design thinking is the ability to come up with simple, elegant, user-friendly solutions to complex
problems, to deliver experiences that anticipate peoples’ needs, and delight them in unexpected ways.”
(GISH)
Design thinking is sometimes referred to as the new competitive advantage. Many practitioners
believe it is an activity focused on human-centered designs grounded in creativity and human
perception that is difficult to replicate. Design thinking often employs tools and methods which
themselves can be highly process-oriented; some having solid foundations in scientific traditions, while
others seems to chaotic in nature. Even a casual analysis of the successful products created by firms
such as IDEO and Continuum would show processes that are often sometimes rigid, highly artistic,
somewhat chaotic, and seemingly not well- suited to rigid business deadlines. Despite this spectrum
many business executives now realize that design thinking may well be the key ingredient to future
success in businesses, institutions, and governments. The good news is that it can, indeed, be taught,
nurtured, and sustained.
Leaders and managers can support design thinking by challenging outdated modes of thinking,
being, and operating while also inspiring and helping to guide this much needed change by becoming
fluent in the languages of business, arts, and design.
The role of design has expanded from solving problems to:
 Design as a cultural tool enabling transformation
 Design as a business tool fueling innovation
 Design as a differentiation tool supporting brand
 Design as a usability tool focusing on people
CAUTION: Design thinking is not in itself a formula for success. It has suffered the fate many oncepopular ideas have experienced. It has not always lived up to the hype.
“There were many successes, but far too many more failures in this endeavor. Why? Companies
absorbed the process of design thinking all too well, turning it into a linear, gated, by-the-book
methodology that delivered, at best, incremental change and innovation. Call it N+1
innovation.”(Bruce Nussbaum, formerly one of design thinking's biggest advocates). (Nussbaum,
2011)
“Design consultancies that promoted design thinking were, in effect, hoping that a process trick
would produce significant cultural and organizational change. From the beginning, the process
of design thinking was scaffolding for the real deliverable: creativity. But in order to appeal to
the business culture of process, it was denuded of the mess, the conflict, failure, emotions, and
looping circularity that is part and parcel of the creative process. In a few companies, CEOs and
managers accepted that mess along with the process and real innovation took place. In most
others, it did not. As practitioners of design thinking in consultancies now acknowledge, the
success rate for the process was low, very low.” (Nussbaum, 2011)
“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without
changing our thinking.” Albert Einstein
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History of Design Thinking
Pre -1960s
 Buckminster Fuller began formulating his theory of a comprehensive anticipatory design science
as early as 1927. In 1950 he outlined a course, which he taught at MIT in 1956, as part of the
Creative Engineering Laboratory. Students included engineers, industrial designers, materials
scientists, and chemists, representing research and development corporations from across the
country. (Dubberly, 2004)
 Harold van Doren published Industrial Design - A Practical Guide to Product Design and
Development, which includes discussions of design methods and practices, in 1940.
 Discussions about design and development processes began shortly after the WWII. They grew
out of military research and development efforts in at least three fields: operations research,
cybernetics, and large-scale engineering project management. (Dubberly, 2004)
1960s
 Books on methods and theories of design in different fields were published:
o Asimow, Morris. Introduction to Design. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1962.
o Alexander, Christopher. Notes on the Synthesis of Form. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1964.
o Archer, L. Bruce. Systematic Method for Designers. Council of Industrial Design,
H.M.S.O., 1965
o Jones, John Christopher. Design Methods. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1970.
 The first books on methods of creativity were published:
o Gordon, William J. J. Synectics, the Development of Creative Capacity. New York: Harper,
1961
o Osborn, Alex F. Applied Imagination: Principles and Procedures of Creative Thinking.
New York: Scribner, 1963. (Osborn is considered the father of brain storming as a
technique.)
 L. Bruce Archer, professor of Design Research at the Royal College of Art, argued that design was
"not merely a craft-based skill but should be considered a knowledge-based discipline in its own
right, with rigorous methodology and research principles incorporated into the design process."
He coined the term designerly to describe ways of knowing what to do. He stated:
"There exists a designerly way of thinking and communicating that is both different from
scientific and scholarly ways of thinking and communicating, and as powerful as scientific
and scholarly methods of inquiry when applied to its own kinds of problems." (Archer,
1979)
 Herbert A. Simon, a researcher in artificial intelligence and cognitive sciences, established a
science of design that would be "a body of intellectually tough, analytic, partly formalizable,
partly empirical, teachable doctrine about the design process."
 Stanford made its first appearance when Robert McKim, in the School of Engineering at Stanford
University, began teaching a course titled ME101: Visual Thinking, based on the work of
psychologist Rudolf Arnheim.
1970s
 Here began a period of rejection – perhaps better referred to as the first rejection, as there is
another such effort now in 2014 – of the movement to create formal design methods. Not an
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
unexpected reaction to the attempt to formalize a uniquely human endeavor so focused in
creativity.
Robert McKim (1973) publishes Experiences in Visual Thinking, which includes the acronym
Express, Test, Cycle (ETC) as a representation of a design process.
1980s
 Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber (1984) wrote Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning,
showing that design and planning problems are “wicked problems” as opposed to tame, single
disciplinary problems of science. They led an effort to create new and improved methods.
 The International Conferences on Engineering Design (ICED) was formed.
 Notable books on design approaches published:
o Hubka, Vladimir, and W. E. Eder. Principles of Engineering Design. London: Butterworth
Scientific, 1982.
o Beitz, Wolfgang, Ken M. Wallace, and Gerhard Pahl. Engineering Design. London: Design
Council, 1984.
o French, M. J. Conceptual Design for Engineers. London: Design Council, 1985.
o Cross, Nigel. Engineering Design Methods. England: Wiley, 1989.
o Lawson, Bryan. How Designers Think: The Design Process Demystified. London:
Architectural, 1980.
o Rowe, G. Peter (1987). Design Thinking. Cambridge: The MIT Press
 Journals focused on design appeared:
o Design Studies (1979)
o Design Issues (1984)
o Research in Engineering Design (1989)
 The Design Methods Group and the conferences of the Environmental Design Research
Association (EDRA) issued publications.
 The National Science Foundation initiative on design theory and methods led to substantial
growth in engineering design methods in the late 1980s.
 The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) launched its series of conferences on
design theory and methodology.
 The 1980s also saw the rise of human-centered design and the rise of design-centered business
management.
 Nigel Cross, Professor of Design Studies and Editor of Design Studies Journal published
"Designerly Ways of Knowing." (Design Studies 3.4 (1982): 221-27.) In this paper, he described
design as its own culture to be taught in schools and contrasted it with science culture and arts
and humanities culture. He proposed the idea that "there are things to know, ways of knowing
them and ways of finding out about them that are specific to the design area."
 Donald Schön, professor and theorist in organizational learning, wrote a seminal work titled The
Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action (New York: Basic, 1983.) He sought to
establish "an epistemology of practice implicit in the artistic, intuitive processes which [design
and other] practitioners bring to situations of uncertainty, instability, uniqueness and value
conflict."
 Rolf Faste, director of the design program at Stanford, created Ambidextrous Thinking, a
required class for graduate product design majors that extends McKim's process of visual
thinking to design as a "whole-body way of doing."
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1990s
 Ideas of organizational learning and creating nimble businesses came to the forefront.
 IDEO is formed by the combination of three industrial design companies. IDEO became one of
the first design companies to showcase their design process, which draws heavily on the
Stanford curriculum.
 Books from this era include:
o Nonaka, Ikujirō and Hirotaka Takeuchi. The Knowledge-Creating Company: How
Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation. New York: Oxford UP, 1995.
o Pugh, Stuart. Total Design: Integrated Methods for Successful Product Engineering.
Wokingham, England: Addison-Wesley Pub., 1991.
2000 to present
 The term design thinking soared in popularity in the business press.
 Books written in this era include:
o Florida, Richard L. The Rise of the Creative Class: and How It's Transforming Work,
Leisure, Community and Everyday Life. New York, NY: Basic, 2002.
o Martin, Roger L. The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win through Integrative
Thinking. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School, 2007.
o Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers: the Story of Success. New York: Little, Brown and, 2008.
o Brown, Tim, and Barry Kātz. Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms
Organizations and Inspires Innovation. New York: Harper Business, 2009.
o Lockwood, Thomas. Design Thinking: Integrating Innovation, Customer Experience and
Brand Value. New York, NY: Allworth, 2010.
o Design Thinking: Understand – Improve – Apply, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, 2011
 There was a shift of design thinking away from the product fields and into the business sector,
sparking a debate about the hijacking and exploitation of the concept and practice. A U.K. based
design consultancy firm formed by Lavrans Løvlie, Ben Reason, and Chris Downs focused on
design approaches that can be extended and adapted to tackle the design of services. This
marked the beginning of the service design consultancy movement worldwide.
 The MSLOC program at Northwestern University began to teach design thinking to learning and
organizational change students in the graduate program as a formal method to explore
organizational change and behavior change. Curriculum offerings integrated design thinking
with business practices, organizational development, organizational and social psychology,
learning sciences and organizational learning; while faculty collaborated with other schools at
Northwestern, such as the McCormick School of Engineering and the Medill School of
Journalism, to fully explore the use of design tools in broad contexts.
 Hasso- Plattner-Institute for IT Systems Engineering in Potsdam, Germany established a design
thinking program. The Hasso-Plattner-Institute Design Thinking Research Program started at
Stanford to teach engineering students design thinking as a formal method in what is generally
known today as the “d.school”.
 The MMM Program at Northwestern University (earning both an MBA and an M.S. in Design
Innovation) was the first degree program to incorporate design thinking into its core curriculum.
 Radford University began offering an online Master of Fine Arts in Design Thinking.
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Science, industrialization, production and now the conceptual age
Designers tend to think about and act on problems differently compared to engineers, scientists, and
people with traditional business training. The results of design-driven projects tend to be more creative
(providing a large set of non-obvious elegant solutions) and empathetic (aligned with the needs and
behaviors of the target user group) compared to other approaches. (GISH)
Daniel Pink, in his book, A Whole New Mind, contends that we have transitioned into the Conceptual
Age, a period in which right brain–associated skills such as design, storytelling, and empathy, among
others, are more crucial than the traditional left brain–associated logical linear-oriented analytical skills
valued so much in the past. He states, “The future belongs to people who are creators and empathizers,
pattern recognizers, and meaning makers such as artists, inventors, storytellers, caregivers, and big
picture thinkers.” In other words, to remain competitive, the future requires putting creativity front and
center! (GISH, p212)
Today design takes a front-row seat in our choices. From wastebaskets to the cars we drive, to the
health clinics we visit, or the appliances we use in the kitchen. Design has become a differentiator when
we’re making purchases. In many cases it is the critical factor when making a choice. (GISH, p212-213)
Pink outlines the six senses, or aptitudes, required to succeed in the Conceptual Age. Like wellknown author Edward De Bono, he emphasizes that the aptitudes are teachable and not limited to the
domain of the artist, designer, poet, or therapist. Our own thinking is added to each sense.
Design thinking enables one’s product or service to stand out from the competition. This has
resulted in organizations now viewing themselves in new and exciting ways.
“Businesspeople don’t need to understand designers better. They need to be better
designers.” —Robert Martin, Dean, Rotman School of Management
“We don’t make ‘automobiles.’ BMW makes ‘moving works of art’ that express the driver’s
love of quality.” —Chris Bangle, BMW
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Myths and realities of design thinking
The over-used phrase appropriate here is that the use of design thinking depends on many factors.
For example, the design thinking approach would be useless when trying to synthesize a new compound
for pharmaceutical development and less than ideal when trying to optimize a manufacturing facility.
However, when an organization needs to address issues that seem impervious to traditional methods or
find ways to grow organically, the design thinking process can provide unique perspectives and a
distinctive process. (GISH, p511)
It is important to distinguish that design can be both a state (“Look at my design; it is a chair.”) and a
process (“We need to design a new chair.”). (GISH, p511)
Successful companies often start with an insight about an unmet need. To grow the company,
management focuses on leveraging this insight. Over time, as the organization pursues efficiency
through optimization of organizational functions, the organization becomes disconnected from the
customers and interactions that created the initial insight. Companies naturally get better at knowing
how to make things, but, due to the focus on operations, actually get worse at knowing what things to
make. This phenomenon was observed and named The Innovation Gap by Patrick Whitney, the dean of
IIT’s Institute of Design.
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Design Thinking as a Process
“The typical creative design process, which is usually an intuitive and individual process, design thinking
consists of a flexible sequence of process steps and iteration loops, each including several tools and
resulting in different artifacts. Since it is the idea of design thinking to be applied by multi-disciplinary
teams instead of well-trained designers, an explicit understanding of the process is crucial.” (Thoring,
2011)
“Our processes determine the quality of our products. If we wish to improve our products, we must
improve our processes; we must continually redesign not just our products but also the way we design.”
(Dubberly, 2004)
“Examining process may not benefit everyone. For an individual designer—imagine someone working
alone on a poster— focusing on process may hinder more than it helps. But teaching new designers or
working with teams on large projects requires us to reflect on our process. Success depends on defining
roles and processes in advance, documenting what we actually did, identifying and fixing broken
processes.” (Dubberly, 2004)
“Ad hoc development processes are not efficient and not repeatable. They constantly must be
reinvented making improvement nearly impossible. At a small scale, the costs may not matter, but large
organizations cannot sustain them.” (Dubberly, 2004)
Examples of process models
The processes of solving design problems can be viewed in a traditional format. This is a simple model
(sometimes referred to as direct design process):
Inputs > Process > Outputs
It is subject to garbage/good IN; garbage/good OUT. It neatens a messy world. It may promote an
illusion of linearity and mechanism—of cause and effect. You can add more detail—dividing phases into
steps and steps into sub-steps, almost infinitely. Processes rarely have fixed beginnings or endings. You
can almost always add steps upstream or downstream.
Basic design process model
This resulted from an analysis of many models by Koberg and Bagnall in a search for commonality
among many different design processes.
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Early design thinking models were formulated based on problem-solving from the engineering
standpoint, but expanding with the first formal steps into human centered design.
More complex design process models reflecting project model approach
Jay Doblin (1987) published A Short, Grandiose Theory of Design shortly before he died. A few important
points include:

For much of history, most design problems could be solved using:
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o






Design training (including engineering, science, etc;. sometimes called direct design
problems characterized as having a single solution step)
o Experience (“I have seen this before and know what works”, perhaps from trial and
error experience.)
o Applied intuition
Design has evolved from a seamless intuitive process into a more complicated one which can be
split into different stages or operations. This can be called indirect design; i.e., the use of
drawings or other representations to review and develop until a final output is recognized.
(Note that this is as old as civilization itself.) Three generalize stages have been termed as
follows:
o Analysis: “to assemble from a virtual infinity of information whatever is relevant to the
project…”
o Genesis: “…generating new information through the application of intelligence.”
o Synthesis: combining information, perhaps in new ways, which “…can contribute
enormously to the product’s value,” even if not adding greatly to the product’s features
or specifications.
“Products can be conceived as having two polar properties, performance and appearance. A
continuum exists between pure performance and pure appearance.”
Dobbins identified the six types of design.
 Product performance design, focused on quantitative features that allow for easy
comparison and where engineering solutions prevail.
 Product appearance design, mostly associated with the appearance of the product and
often attached to individual designers.
 Performance uni-system design (product-based competition), where the relationships
and interactions between products is most important.
 Appearance uni-system design (product-based competition), where the focus is on
delivering a satisfying experience.
 Performance and appearance multisystem design, competition between companies
where the uni-systems compete instead of the products.
“Just as there are six types of design, there are six different kinds of designers. It is a rare
designer who is competent in more than one design type. The capability in one area may
actually obstruct a designer’s ability in another area.”
“The big design offices of the past that claim to be one-stop shops providing architecture,
packaging, market research, direct mail, products, manuals, trade shows, advertising, etc., are
no longer capable of doing today’s complex multisystem programs.”
“We will experience a time when designers forego their adolescent reliance on purely intuitive
practices; innocence, a lovely quality in a child, will be replaced by algorithm, an equally admiral
quality in a professional.” (Jim Dobbins, 1990)
A framework for creativity and innovation, from Creativity at Work downloaded from
https://www.creativityatwork.com/design-thinking-strategy-for-innovation/.


Define the challenge: Develop a set of powerful questions to surface opportunities, and frame
innovation.
Gather data: Learn how to gather data through qualitative research such as observation and
storytelling to augment traditional forms of data gathering. Tools include journey mapping and
value chain analysis.
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






Reframe and clarify the challenge: Make sense of research by seeing patterns, themes, and
larger relationships between the information. Challenge assumptions and illuminate
opportunities latent within the organization.
Artful reflection: Cultivate your intuition and develop aesthetic ways of knowing. The elegant
solution wins in the marketplace.
Visualization: Develop visual thinking skills to decode images, and communicate ideas visually.
Visual literacy transcends the limitations of language and activates our senses. Tools include
mind-mapping, sketching and painting.
Ideate: Learn six idea-generation tools to foster shifts in perception, break out of traditional
mind-sets, and generate seed ideas for innovation, including SCAMPER, metaphorical thinking,
connecting the dots, and Edison’s invention techniques.
Evaluate: Identify the criteria you need to evaluate ideas; learn the distinction between
critiquing and criticizing an idea; give feedback that enhances creativity rather than crushes it.
Prototyping: Create a visual tangible representation of your idea and present it to the group for
feedback. Create a feasibility and adoption checklist to get people onboard.
o Customer co-creation: Exploring alternative futures with your internal and external
customers.
o Assess: Gather feedback from prototype. Assess outcomes, and refine your project.
Develop a set of feedback questions to get the information you need; i.e., does this add
value to the customer?
o Implement: Create an action plan and test-drive your innovation.
o Iterate: Assess results, modify and improve, using this framework.
Develop design thinking capabilities in your organization (from Creativity at Work downloaded
from https://www.creativityatwork.com/design-thinking-strategy-for-innovation/). While
learning to be a good designer takes years, non-designers can learn to think like a designer and
apply these skills to leadership and innovation. Hands-on innovation challenges will guide you
through a design thinking process from start to finish.
o Develop the five discovery skills that make up the innovator’s DNA and optimize your
ability to innovate.
o Examine the four primary forces that shape innovation and ten types of innovation you
can leverage.
o Connect more deeply with customers to uncover opportunities for innovation.
o Transform insights and data into actionable ideas.
o Explore the tool-sets and skill-sets used by designers: empathy for your customers, idea
generation, critical thinking, aesthetic ways of knowing, problem-solving, rapidprototyping, and collaboration.
o Develop a wide variety of concepts for products, services, experiences, messages,
channels, business models, or strategies.
Relationship to industrial design
“Industrial design is a process of design applied to products that are to be manufactured through
techniques of mass production. Its key characteristic is that design is separated from manufacture: the
creative act of determining and defining a product's form takes place in advance of the physical act of
making a product, which consists purely of repeated, often automated, replication. This distinguishes
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industrial design from craft-based design, where the form of the product is determined by the product's
creator at the time of its creation.” (Wikipedia)
“All industrial products are the result of a design process, but the nature of this process can take
many forms: it can be conducted by an individual or a large team; it can emphasize intuitive creativity or
calculated scientific decision-making; and it can be influenced by factors as varied as materials,
production processes, business strategy, and prevailing social, commercial or aesthetic attitudes. The
role of an industrial designer is to create and execute design solutions for problems of form, usability,
physical ergonomics, marketing, brand development, and sales.” (Wikipedia)
Nowhere in the above is “delight the customer” mentioned. As such, design thinking or any other
term of similar use can be thought of as both a part of, an extension of, and/or a unique set of factors,
to emphasize in the design process.
In addition, traditional industrial design is focused on products and design thinking has a much
broader focus on business activity. This is especially true in business model innovation.
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What is innovation and the role design thinking plays?
“Design thinking attempts to inspire the essential element of creativity, the ability to take an abstract
idea and create something with it. It’s based upon the fundamental belief that an unexecuted idea, one
that is never realized, is a worthless proposition and that doing is equally as valuable as thinking.”
(Reuven Cohen, contributor to Forbes)
“Design is the action of bringing something new and desired into existence—a proactive stance that
resolves or dissolves problematic situations by design. It is a compound of routine, adaptive, and design
expertise brought to bear on complex dynamic situations.” (Harold Nelson)
“When design principles are applied to strategy and innovation, the success rate for innovation
dramatically improves. Design thinking is at the core of effective strategy development and
organizational change. Design can be applied to products, services, processes, and physical locations…
anything that needs to be optimized for human interaction. You can design the way you lead, manage,
create and innovate’. (GISH)
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Chapter 31 - Design Innovation
Chapter 31 of the GISH forms an excellent resource for those getting started in design thinking or in
need of a process outline to help them develop a better overview of the subject matter. The chapter is
outlined here with supplemental material. Additional chapters from the GISH relevant to design thinking
follow this section. There is some duplication with previous sections.
There is a tendency for designers to approach problems differently compared to engineers,
scientists, and people with traditional business training who most often proceed to solve the problem,
looking for the “right” or “best available” answer. The results of design-driven projects tend to be more
creative (providing a large set of non-obvious elegant solutions) and empathetic (aligned with the needs
and behaviors of the target user group) compared to other approaches.
This does not mean that the design thinking approach is in any way superior to the other processes.
The world of optimization and efficiency gain is well represented by tools and methods all calculated to
deliver an appropriate answer. Design thinking can help people to create the new and unexpected with
its human centered approach.
PROCESS, METHODS AND TOOLS
When training designers, we want to develop both understanding and making skill sets.
Understanding includes research and critical thinking. Making includes finding non-obvious connections,
abductive thinking (aka, guessing), and making things like models, drawings, prototypes, and
communications. Designers need to be able to think both abstractly and concretely with equal skill.
A basic design thinking process has five steps:
1. Problem framing: Identify the problem to be solved and outline a general approach for how to
solve it.
2. Research: Gather qualitative and quantitative data related to the problem frame.
3. Analysis: Unpack and interpret the data, building models, drawings, or prototypes that help
explain what was found.
4. Synthesis: Generate ideas and recommendations, using the models as a guide.
5. Decision making: Conduct evaluative research to determine which concepts or
recommendations best fit the desirable, viable, and feasible criteria.
Reframe the problem
This is perhaps the most difficult step and is the hallmark of design thinking. Designers can have
powerful and hidden biases that lead to projects being framed improperly. It is important to frame the
problem in such a way as to allow for exploration of issues and solutions instead of jumping immediately
to the answer.
To frame projects correctly, the designer should work at the right level of abstraction, and focus on
activities, not problems and technologies.
Working at the right level of abstraction
Most designers frame projects at too narrow and concrete a level as they seek a correct answer. A more
abstract frame can result in more varied and unique ideas.
The abstraction ladder, based on the work of S. I. Hayakawa in analyzing language, is a useful
method for problem framing. Designers can use the ladder to show how making a problem more or less
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abstract will result in different outcomes. This helps the organization match the problem frame (and
degree of abstraction) to the business need.
Focus on activities and not the problem or technology
A powerful quality of human centered design is the focus on designing for user activities, wants and
needs and not just bringing efficiency to the current activity. If a problem is focused on achieving a
specific goal, such as sales growth, then the problem has already be overly constrained to the lowest
level of abstraction.
5E’s framework
This is one of the most used frameworks in all of design innovation. The framework helps you break
down and analyze existing experiences; it will also be helpful in synthesis later on. It is best used on
experiences where there is a clear beginning and a clear end. There are five stages:
Entice: How do people first learn about a product or service? What draws people in?
Enter: How do people get to the product or service? How do they begin?
Engage: What do people do during their use of the product or service?
Exit: How does the experience end?
Extend: How do people keep in touch with the service? What do users carry with them, both
physically and mentally?
Customer’s journey
Use when studying an activity that is not contained in a single experience (defined beginning and end
point), but rather grows and changes over a lifetime (or other extended period of time). The phases of
the journey are as follows:
Discovery: The period of time where the customer initially finds out about the activity. We need to
know what draws them in and keeps their interest. The period of discovery is critical—this is
often called the first moment of truth, when a user discovers a new product or service. Although
often the shortest of the phases, it is important to know the range of entry points for any
activity.
Trial: Once discovered, the user begins to try on the new activity. The trial phase is often where they
experience the activity for the first time (considered the second moment of truth) and
determine if it fits into their life and lifestyle (or, it may positively shape their life and lifestyle). It
is important to note that in most cases in the trial phase, the connection between the user and
the activity is tenuous—they may leave it at any time.
Mastery: During trial, the customer begins to learn and improve. They leave the trial phase once
they achieve mastery; this usually requires an investment of time from the customer. In
mastery, the user has a strong connection to the activity—it may define them and their lifestyle.
Maintenance: It can be hard to remain a master of any activity over an extended period of time.
Often, customers slip into a phase of maintenance where they are no longer engaged at the
same level of mastery.
Three Levels of WHY
This tool is less a framework and more a process. The goal is to isolate an activity that seemed
newsworthy and/or unexplained and try to determine why it is happening. The Three Level of Why was
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originally part of root cause analysis for manufacturing quality improvement. It has been adapted to the
design thinking process.
This tool is best used when your insights feel superficial and not deep. Often this approach will
suggest additional research. You can ask why more than three times. At some point the answer will be,
“That is obvious, silly, or too pedantic.” Back up one level and you should have a deep insight.
Empathy Map
A simple but powerful way to capture what a user is thinking, feeling, and doing related to the activity
you are studying. The process to create a map includes asking:
 What are they feeling? Enter three to five statements that summarize how people are feeling during
the activity.
 What are they saying? Enter three to five statements the user is actually saying about the activity.
 What are they doing? Write down at least five activities that people are doing as part of the larger
identified target activity.
 What won’t they tell you? Write down one to five things the user would not want anyone to know
(related to the activity). This is often called the dirty little secret.
When the map is complete, use the four questions below to help generate insights:
 What was new? Was there anything that surprised you?
 What was different? Was anything different than you thought it would be?
 What was frequent? Did you see a pattern?
 What do you want to act on? Was there a problem or need you feel compelled to solve?
How Might We statements
Engineering design is focused on creating detailed measurable user requirements. Requirements
definition can stifle innovation at the early stage of a project. Teams often start to generate
requirements (what the solution should do) before they have exhaustively explored what the solution
could be (and often before they know what the real problem is that they should solve!).
To ensure that you generate a large set of creative ideas, it is helpful to frame your brainstorming
sessions with “how might we” (or HMW) questions. This is brainstorming applied to a specific situation.
When developing HMW statements, consider:
 You may need to write two or three HMW statements for each insight. This is why it is helpful to
distill all of your research into a single driving insight.
 A typical project may include up to nine HMW statements. If your HMW statements are good, the
ideas should generate themselves. If you can’t see good ideas coming from your statements, try rewriting them to be more specific, less high level, and add more detail to the constraint and context.
 HMW statements should have teeth; this means that the statement will send you in a specific
direction and is not overly vague.
 HMW statements should present a clear challenge or paradox; this is usually because there is a good
constraint or element of context.
 HMW statements should be controversial or have a counterargument. You should be able to make
an alternate argument. This means that the HMW statement should be clear and thoughtful.
 HMW statements should not have a single solution in mind or include a solution in the text.
 A set of HMW statements should not be variations on one theme.
Prototyping
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Much like design, the word prototype can be both a noun and a verb. Prototyping can help reduce
uncertainty about new concepts.
Proof, during innovation projects, is impossible to obtain (at least in the sense you cannot
“guarantee” an innovation). Even with surveys and focus groups, it can be hard to prove that you are
pursuing the right concept direction, or even that your concept is valid.
Prototypes are used to engage your users for more detailed feedback, particularly related to the
main assumptions of the concept (your assumptions about why it will be adopted, how it will be used,
and so on), you will need to design experiments and experiences to answer questions, not to create a
representation of what the concept will look like for implementation. Here are some good practices for
effective experience and experiment designs:
 Look for creative ways of prototyping, like skits or full-scale mock-ups.
 Always plan what to build before you build it.
 Prototypes should be full scale and interactive; the user should be involved in the prototypes. This
should not be a passive experience.
 Never try to sell your prototype; do not lead the user to give you the feedback you want to hear.
 Set context. Explain when and how they will encounter the concept in real life. Make this as real as
possible. Also make expectations for feedback clear. You want to know what worked and what did
not, and how closely you came to meeting their needs.
 Ask them to narrate. When appropriate, ask users to narrate the experience—what they are
thinking and feeling. Depending on the cycle time of your prototype, you may ask them to move
through the interaction once silently, and then go through it again while narrating.
 Seek feedback. Prepare a format to get specific feedback on the concept. This is a directed
conversation. Be sure you are addressing the key areas of risk, concerns, and assumptions. In
general, do not ask people if they would buy or use the prototype, but rather how they would use it.
The more clear and concrete the user is when describing how they will use the prototype and how
the prototype specifically helps do that process, the more likely they will actually use it.
Research - Qualitative versus quantitative research methods
Qualitative methods often require close supervision by one of two kinds of experts. Those who do it well
because they are already good at it, empathic by nature, excellent at observation, and drawing unique
conclusions from disparate data; or those who study how to do the qualitative methodology and often
achieve quite useable results but rarely make an exciting discovery about the customer.
Qualitative methods are best used when you need a deep understanding of the customer; that level
of understanding the customer may not be aware of, is the goal. So be careful which rabbit hole you
decide to go down. This will require interviewing different levels of customers from key opinion leaders,
lead users, and everyday consumers.
Who should you interview? Beware of so-called experts and key opinion leaders. You can easily
solve problems no one else has and they are also most likely to jump to the next new idea even if it is
not a better idea.
You must also be aware of personal bias. Often people get exactly the answers they want or feel
they need.
Methods most used:
 Individual Interview: Often the best question to ask is a statement, “Show me.” Also using the Five
Why’s, a process of asking the simple question “WHY?” five times until to you reach a clear
understanding, is helpful.
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
Group Interview:
o SLA Marshall Method: Focus the group on a point in the process or aspect of the problem.
Get their different views about a small slice so that people help to explain the problem and
not look for a broad solution prematurely.
o Expert Interviews: Remember that the real experts are the people you’re designing for.
Don’t ask experts for solutions or take their ideas as the final solution.
Seek inspiration in new places: One of the best ways to inspire new ideas is to look at similar
experiences in other contexts, instead of focusing too narrowly on the research topic. The simple act of
looking at different contexts can bring to mind new insights.
The P.O.I.N.T. technique
The acronym stands for:
P = Problems
O = Obstacles
I = Insights
N = Needs
T = Themes
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Chapter 4 Ten Roles People Can Play
The roles people play on teams has been a subject of research for decades. There has been recent focus
on the special roles people play for teams engaged in high innovation content activity where creativity
and human-centered design thinking often plays the major role over the traditional features and
functions of problem solving. In design thinking, one needs to be aware of what roles people are good
at performing, when they are at their best and under what circumstances, and how managers and
leaders can make this a recurring predictable activity.
Use the short descriptions reprinted here as a guide to become a more aware person about your
team and its individual members. This will help you view them as more than a group of “functional
problem solving” individuals and more as a “collection of creative resources” in the process of creating a
truly customer pleasing design and possible innovations.
 Futurist: Looks toward the future, scouts new opportunities, and brings future possibilities out of
the fog so that everyone can see them and their potential. Also enables people throughout the
organization to discover the emerging trends that most impact their work.
 Direction setter: Creates and communicates vision and business strategy in a compelling manner,
and ensures innovation priorities are clear.
 Customer advocate: Keeps the voice of the customer alive in the hearts, minds, and actions of
innovators and teams.
 Architect: Designs (or authorizes others to design) an end-to end, integrated innovation process, and
also promotes organization design for innovation, where each function contributes to innovation
capability.
 Venture capitalist: Secures funding for innovation, evaluates and selects projects to receive
resources, and guides implementation.
 Mentor: Coaches and guides innovation champions and teams.
 Barrier buster: Helps navigate political landmines and removes organizational obstacles.
 Networker: Works across organizational boundaries to engage stakeholders, promote connections
across boundaries, and secure widespread support.
 Culture creator: Ensures the spirit of innovation is understood, celebrated, and aligned with the
strategy of the organization.
 Role model: Provides a living example of innovation through attention and language, as well as
through personal choices and actions. Key stakeholders often test the leader’s words, to see if these
are real. For innovation to move forward, the leader must pass these inevitable tests—to show that,
yes, he or she is absolutely committed to innovation as essential to success
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Chapter 5 –Personal Creativity
Here are some useful definitions of creativity:
“Creativity is most often defined as the mental ability to conceptualize (imagine) new, unusual or
unique ideas, to see the new connection between seemingly random or unrelated things.
Innovation on the other hand, is defined as the process that transforms those forward-looking
new ideas into real-world (commercial) products, services, or processes of enhanced value. The
result of such a transformation can be incremental, evolutionary, or radical in its impact on the
status quo.”
Mitchell Rigie and Keith Harmeyer
Smart-Storming: The Game-Changing Process for Generating Bigger, Better Ideas
“Creativity is the ability to create original ideas, connections, alternatives, or possibilities that are
effective in solving problems, communicating with others, and inspiring new and useful ideas in
others.”
Robert E. Franken
Human Motivation
“Creativity is not simply originality and unlimited freedom. There is much more to it than that.
Creativity also imposes restrictions. While it uses methods other than those of ordinary thinking,
it must not be in disagreement with ordinary thinking—or rather, it must be something that,
sooner or later, ordinary thinking will understand, accept, and appreciate. Otherwise, the result
would be bizarre, not creative.”
Sylvano Arieti
Creativity: The Magic Synthesis
Design thinking, like innovation, requires creativity, but creativity does not always lead to good
design thinking or innovation. Organizations that seek to implement design thinking need workplaces
and talent development systems that foster creativity. The process of generating original and effective
ideas requires:
 Diverse inputs/inclusive thinking
 Context articulation
 Divergent thinking
 Convergent thinking
Diverse inputs/Inclusive thinking
Seeking and integrating diverse inputs into everyday thinking can simply and effectively increase overall
personal creativity. Diverse inputs from a multitude of cultures, ages, professions, languages,
nationalities, geographic origins, educational backgrounds, interests, personal relationships,
professional networks, learning sources, etc., all have the potential to enhance an individual’s ability to
generate new ideas and new connections between existing ideas as long as the individual thinks
inclusively about integrating the diverse inputs into his everyday thinking.
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Context articulation
The context in which we are attempting to be creative is the link between an original idea and an
original and effective idea. In order for an idea to be both original and effective, there needs to be a
clear and definite context that is articulated in which the idea can be relevant.
Divergent thinking and convergent thinking
The power of original and effective personal creativity lies in that powerful and complex intersection
between unrestrained thinking and constrained decision making. J. P. Guilford theorized that creativity
comprises both divergent thinking (coming up with many ideas or solutions to a problem) and
convergent thinking (vetting the various ideas to identify the best workable solutions).
7 Common barriers to effective personal creativity
 Our perceived definitions of creativity: We too often assume that creativity is only for artists,
musicians, actors, and others who are called artists.
 Our presumed uses for creativity: We limit the ways creativity can be applicable in our lives. We are
too often creatures of habit.
 Over dependence on knowledge: Rigid adherence to what we know that traps us from discovering
what else could be.
 Our experiences and expertise: Experiences and expertise can work well for us in the convergent
thinking process, but they can limit our ability to think inclusively and generate the volume of ideas
that we need in the divergent thinking process.
 Our habits: Habits are behavior routines that we fall into unconsciously and repeat just as
unconsciously. Habits can blind us to inputs that could be enhancing our art of creativity.
 Our personal and professional relationship networks: The more diverse our personal and
professional networks, the more new ideas and new connections between old ideas we will
generate.
 Our fear of failure: Fear of failure is one of our deepest and most scary fears.
Effective strategies to power up personal creativity
 Trust yourself: Creative people have cultivated a deep trust in their own ability to be creative.
 Open up: Over time we create habits of shutting out and/or letting in the same things over and over
until our creativity suffers because new inputs are not getting through.
 Clean and organize: The need to organize and clean is now known to be a cognitive clearing activity
where you literally make space in your mind to create new ideas and connections.
 Make mistakes: Mistakes are not failures, but should be viewed as experiments.
 Get angry: Anger is the equivalent of a cognitive stimulant as long as you get angry at situations, not
people.
 Get enthusiastic: Enthusiasm for a topic makes you curious about the topic, which opens you up to
new experiences, interesting people, and novel ideas.
 Listen to your hunches: A hunch is often the organic convergent thinking process that occurs in your
mind after you have taken in data from many sources.
 Subtract instead of adding: Sometimes creativity, and often true for design thinking in general, is
about paring things down to their simplest form.
 Move your body: Physical activity is especially useful in the transition between the divergent and
convergent thinking phases.
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Question your questions: The ability to discern between a wrong question and a right question is
crucial to the creativity process because the question is the starting point for the creative journey.
Pump up the volume: More ideas are better than fewer ideas, but always keep in mind that ideas do
need to focus on the context and constraints.
Read, read, read!: All original ideas begin at the end of someone else’s good idea, even if that idea is
from some area far removed from the current design effort.
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Chapter 6: The Creative Corporation
Defining creativity – without using a dictionary:
 Creativity is evidenced by novelty.
 Creativity often involves combining well-known particulars in a new way.
 Creativity usually occurs only after hard work or lengthy preparation.
 Creativity often produces unusable or worthless outcomes.
 Creativity can come from anyone and anywhere.
 Creativity is more likely under duress, stress, or scarcity.
 Creativity can involve luck and unpredictable contingencies.
We tend to see ideas, products, and designs, as creative if they are of a type that we haven’t seen
before. Creativity often involves combining known particulars in new ways. Creativity usually occurs only
after hard work or lengthy preparation. Creativity can come from anyone and anywhere.
Corporate creativity may involve little more than recombining the resources that the organization
already controls. With this understanding, the key is to help people become aware of the resources that
are within their realm of control in order to enable creative recombination of the resource pool.
Creative people are more likely to point to the hard work, discipline, practice, and years of effort
that lie behind momentary, spontaneous acts of creation than to wait for a spontaneous eureka!
moment. Anyone can improve their creative capacity with enough hard work, practice, feedback,
knowledge development, persistence, etc.
Creativity is just as likely to occur under duress, stress, or scarcity. Habits drive many firms to seek
cost cutting, downsizing, price cutting, etc., to deal with stressful times, while the bold firm will focus on
discovering creative solutions that they would not have thought of under other circumstances.
Creativity can involve luck and unpredictable contingencies. The experienced creative person
recognizes luck and learns to leverage every lucky stroke that comes their way.
Best Practices in corporate creativity
 Idea time: People need time to think and to develop new ideas, so many organizations allow
employees to have think time to incubate new ideas.
 Risk taking: Organizations need to articulate risk boundaries clearly enough so people feel
comfortable in their ideation, experimentation, and decision making.
 Challenge: People need to feel challenged within their own areas of expertise.
 Freedom: People need the autonomy to express their individual talents, make mistakes, learn from
mistakes, and grow within their field of expertise.
 Idea support: Organizations should establish clear objectives and clear contact points for individuals
to discuss their ideas as they develop and to ensure that they are aligned with the long-term
interests of the organization.
 Conflicts: Managers should articulate that there are no entitlements within the organization, and
that all ideas must live or die based on their relative merit within that marketplace.
 Debates: People should be engaged in debates about the merits of their creative ideas.
 Playfulness and humor: People often develop better ideas and more quickly when they are allowed
to play with concepts in a nonthreatening way.
 Trust and openness: People function at their best within a context of trust and openness.
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
Dynamism and liveliness: People today tend to want to minimize the distinction between work and
play. This does not mean that placing bean bag chairs, playrooms with Legos®, or hanging an
airplane wing from the ceiling creates anything other than clutter if that is all a company does. This
must be part of a company’s culture.
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Chapter 12 Ethnography
This is an element of anthropology dealing with the systematic study of cultures and human behavior,
exploring the beliefs, practices, artifacts, folk knowledge, and behaviors of a defined group of people
with the primary purpose of documenting or discovering a faithful and accurate understanding of a
defined group’s ways of using certain methods or tools.
This is a qualitative research methodology that has its own challenges surrounding accuracy, validity,
and reliability due to the natural settings of the research, participants’ activities and choices, design of
the research, and selection of participants.
In the business environment, ethnography is used as a deliberate inquiry process for the specific
purpose of assessing the use of a certain product, or for creating a new product by finding out what
people want.
Ethnographic research in business tends to be most effective for platform-type innovations—more
so than for fundamental, derivative, or simple variations.
Those who practice design thinking and ethnographers share the traits of having high levels of
curiosity and the determination to dig deeper for information.
Organizations may engage in business ethnographic research using these steps:
 Primarily study people’s behavior in actual use settings first before using a controlled setting.
 Collect data broadly to better identify unmet or hidden user expectations as well as specifically
stated needs.
 Be open-minded in collecting data in various forms, including pictures, stories, mind-maps, etc.,
as well as in a prescribed format. Detail and details are important!
 Scope the research based on the type of design, innovation and/or target platform to prevent
unneeded complexity.
 Select lead users to gather more information faster, to shorten project duration.
 Try to live the participant’s experience in order to understand the emotional meaning of the
experience.
While interviewing, let the participants express their responses and experiences in their own ways,
terms, and expressions. Capture them all as is without questioning or formatting. Capture exact terms
used or views expressed by participants. Good interview technique requires that you anticipate and
prepare probing questions ahead of time, but be prepared for impromptu discussion. However, stay in
scope.
Be a courteous, caring, listener and express appreciation for each participant’s support. Do not
criticize any social group, its members, leaders, decisions, or activities. If you do not appear interested
and look like you’re having fun, your subjects will respond accordingly.
Analyze, distill, and extract as many findings as possible, but pay more attention to unmet needs,
subtle experiences, or insights.
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Chapter 13 Creativity Tools
The creativity tools listed here represent a general list, which is by no means exhaustive. Users must find
tools that work for them as individuals, within the context of team goals and dynamics, business realties,
and organizational culture. What worked last week may not work as well in another team with a
different product and different pressures.
The following tools are listed in a general order in the creative process to which they may be most
applicable. In reality, many tools are used anywhere and anytime the right problems shows up in the
right situation.
Finding Opportunities and Problems to Solve (Preparation)
Tool 1: The Quickscore Creativity Test
A quick test to gain a very general measure of your own creativity. It can be found at:
http://www.testmycreativity.com/
As with all such quick test the results should be taken “with a grain of salt”. They are, at best, a very
rough indicator.
Tool 2: Kano Analysis
This tool helps you break away from the common mind-set that says you’ve got to have as many
features as possible in a product, and helps you think more subtly about the features that you do choose
to include. The Kano model is based on the premise that a product or service can have three types of
attributes or properties:
 Performance attributes: Which are not absolutely necessary, but which are known about and
increase the customer’s enjoyment of the product.
 Threshold attributes: Which customers expect to be present in a product.
 Excitement attributes: Which customers don’t even know they want, but are delighted when they
find them.
To use Kano Model Analysis in a creative fashion, follow these steps:
 Start by brainstorming all of the possible features and attributes of your product or service, and
everything you can do to please and delight your customers.
 Classify these as threshold, performance, excitement, or not relevant.
 Be sure that your program, product, or service has all appropriate threshold attributes. If necessary,
cut out performance attributes so that you can get these included, as you’re going nowhere fast if
these aren’t present.
 Where possible, cut out attributes that are not relevant.
 Next, look at the excitement attributes, and think how you can build some of these into your
product or service. Again if necessary, cut some performance attributes, so that you can afford
excitement attributes.
 Select appropriate performance attributes so that you can deliver a product or service at a price the
customer is prepared to pay, while still maintaining a good profit margin.
Tool 3: Nominal Group Technique
A group ideation and problem-solving technique involving the triple crown of problem identification,
creative solution generation, and decision making that works as follows:
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Every member of the group gives their view of the solution, with a short explanation.
Duplicate solutions are eliminated and similar solutions combined until there are specific, unique
solutions to consider from the list of all solutions.
 Each person ranks each solution as first, second, third, fourth, and so on. No ties are allowed.
 Tally and rank the solutions.
 A discussion of reasons for the choices generally follows. Ideas may then be further combined
Advantages of this tool:
 Some group members are much more vocal than others and can drown out useful opinions.
 Some group members think better in silence.
 It helps to promote full group participation.
 It helps to control controversial or heated conflict.
 It equalizes power imbalance between facilitator and participant or participants, or within teams.
 When stakeholders request some form of quantitative output of the process.
Tool 4: Synectics
Combines a structured approach to creativity with the freewheeling problem-solving approach used in
techniques like SCAMPER, brainstorming, and random input. Many experts classify its use as a secondlevel tool to be employed when other creativity techniques have failed.
Generating ideas with Synectics is a three- or four-stage process:
 Referring: Gathering information, and defining the opportunity in terms of direct analogies.
 Reflecting: Using a wide range of techniques to generate ideas, including personal analogies.
 Reconstructing: Bringing ideas back together to create a useful solution using a compressed
conflict model.
 Building fantastic energy: Users must let their imaginations ramble unrestrained, to connect and
concoct the most bizarre solutions imaginable, often described as the fantastic analogy.
If none of these solves the problem, the next step is to use some of the 22 possible triggers below to
try to break free of existing thinking patterns or as starting points for brainstorming. They are
•
Subtract
•
Repeat
•
Combine
•
Add
•
Transfer
•
Empathize
•
Animate
•
Superimpose
•
Change scale •
Substitute
•
Fragment
•
Isolate
•
Distort
•
Disguise
•
Contradict
•
Parody
•
Prevaricate
•
Analogize
•
Hybridize
•
Metamorphose
•
Symbolize
•
Mythologize
Tool 5: Brainstorming or Operational Creativity
This can be done on your own or with groups. The same rule of being non-judgmental applies. The
process guidelines include:
 Prepare the group: Consider who will attend the meeting and set up a comfortable meeting
environment for the session. Seek diversity at many levels
 Present the opportunity: Clearly define the opportunity that you want to solve, and lay out any
criteria that you must meet.
 Guide the discussion: A facilitator should guide the initial ideas and help to find new ideas through
combinations. Do not follow one train of ideas for too long lest you get locked into a premature
solution.
Tool 6: Six Thinking Hats
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A technique created by Edward De Bono. Use De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats to help teams and
organizations move beyond a linear problem solving habit. The six hats (which are color coded) are:
 Analyzing (facts and data)
 Intuition and feeling
 Positivity and optimism
 Exploration and creativity
 Managing and controlling
 Danger Spotting and judging
Gathering and Reflecting on Information (Incubation)
Tool 7: Attribute Listing, Morphological Analysis, and Matrix Analysis
 Attribute Listing focuses on the qualities and/or characteristics of an object, seeing how each
attribute could be improved.
 Morphological Analysis uses the same basic technique, but is used to create a new product by
mixing components in a new way.
 Matrix Analysis focuses on businesses. It is used to generate new approaches, using attributes such
as market sectors, customer needs, products, promotional methods, and so on.
Tool 8: Generating New Ideas with Storyboarding
The storyboard technique combines brainstorming and lateral thinking with a studio-type system for
developing film plots. The facilitator brings along a flipchart and corkboard, thumbtacks, and a good
supply of 5×8 in blank index cards.
Tool 9: Absence Thinking
Deliberately think about what is absent and envision what is not there. It is akin to answering the
question, “Team, guess what we forgot to consider?” How to use it: Divide a piece of paper in half and
consider what you are thinking about on one side; then do the same with what you are not thinking
about on the other side. Next, when you are looking at something (or otherwise sensing), notice what is
not there. You can also watch people and notice what they do not do. Some use it to make lists of things
to remember that you normally forget.
Opportunity Exploration (Insight)
Tool 10: Breakdown (Drilldown) Tree Diagram
A simple technique for breaking complex opportunities and/or problems down into progressively
smaller parts, it gives creative people a starting point at which to begin thinking about the situation, and
starts prompting their creativity and curiosity. Start by writing the opportunity statement or problem
under investigation down on the left-hand side of a large sheet of paper. Next, write down the points
that make up the next level of detail a little to the right of this. These may be factors contributing to the
issue or opportunity, information relating to it, or questions raised by it. This process of breaking the
issue under investigation into its component parts is called drilling down. For each of these points,
repeat the process. Keep on drilling down into points until you fully understand the factors contributing
to the situation or opportunity being explored.
Tool 11: Lotus Blossom
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Originally developed by Yasuo Matsumura, Director of the Clover Management Research in Japan, this
technique is based on the use of analytical capacities and helps to generate a great number of ideas that
will possibly provide the best solution to the problem to be addressed by the management group.
Process: Draw up a lotus blossom diagram (see Fig. 13-6 in the GISH) made up of a square in the center
of the diagram (the pistil) and eight circles (petals) surrounding the square. Write the central idea or
problem in the center of the diagram. Look for ideas or solutions for the central theme. Then write
them in the flower petals, the circles around the main square. Each idea written in the circles becomes
the central theme of a new lotus blossom. Follow step 3 with all central ideas. Continue the process until
all ideas have been used.
Generating and Evaluating Ideas (Evaluation)
Tool 12: TRIZ Analysis
TRIZ is a problem-solving methodology based on logic and data to solve problems. The method brings
repeatability, predictability, and reliability to the problem solving process with its structured and
algorithmic approach. See Chapter 24 of the GISH for a detailed explanation. TRIZ is a separate
certification offered by IAOIP in conjunction with the Altshuller Institute.
Tool 13: SCAMPER
This tool is used for asking questions about existing products, using each of the seven prompts below.
These questions help you come up with creative ideas for developing new products, and for improving
current ones. SCAMPER stands for:
 Substitute: What materials or resources can you substitute or swap to improve the product? What
other product or process could you use? What rules could you substitute?
 Combine: What would happen if you combined this product with another, to create something new?
What if you combined purposes or objectives? What could you combine to maximize the uses of this
product?
 Adapt: How could you adapt or adjust this product to serve another purpose or use? What else is
the product like? Who or what could you emulate to adapt this product?
 Modify: How could you change the shape, look, or feel of your product? What could you add to
modify this product? What could you emphasize or highlight to create more value?
 Put to another use: Can you use this product somewhere else, perhaps in another industry? Who
else could use this product? How would this product behave differently in another setting?
 Eliminate: How could you streamline or simplify this product? What features, parts, or rules could
you eliminate? What could you understate or tone down?
 Reverse: What would happen if you reversed this process or sequenced things differently? What if
you try to do the exact opposite of what you’re trying to do now? What components could you
substitute to change the order of this product?
Implementation (Elaboration)
Tool 14: Mind Mapping (Refer to Chapter 15 of the GISH for additional details.)
The concept as popular today was developed by Tony Buzan, a British psychology author and television
personality who hosted a BBC series in 1974. Contemporary mind-mapping can be used throughout
every step of design and early development. Different ideas can be organized in various ways to create
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new relationships or put similar concepts together on the map. Having these items placed in a visual
display can help stimulate additional ideas.
Tool 15: Affinity Diagram
A technique for organizing a variety of subjective data (such as options) into categories based on the
intuitive relationships among individual pieces of information. It is often used to find commonalties
among concerns and ideas, and works like this:
 State the problem that is to be considered in broad terms. Avoid detailed problem statements.
 Brainstorm ideas on how to solve the problem. Record the responses on 3×5 in index cards or stickynotes.
 Shuffle the cards and place them randomly in the middle of a table or arrange sticky-notes randomly
on a wall or poster board.
 The group should silently sort the cards/sticky-notes into groups of related ideas. Cards can go into
piles and sticky-notes into columns. Limit the number of piles or columns to between five and ten.
Team members should do this exercise quickly, relying more on their first impressions than logical
thought.
 For each group, pick a card/sticky-note that best represents the theme in the pile. Put that one on
top. If necessary create a new card or sticky-note for that theme and put it on top of the pile or
column.
 Using the groupings, record the grouped ideas on paper. Draw lines around each grouping.
Tool 16: Force Field Analysis Diagram
Force field analysis is a visual aid for pinpointing and analyzing elements that resist change (restraining
forces) or push for change (driving forces). This technique helps drive improvement by developing plans
to overcome the restrainers and make maximum use of the driving forces.
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Chapter 15 Mind-Mapping
Mind-mapping is a concept in which an individual or group starts with a main idea or goal in the middle
and diagrams ideas out from this central subject. People have been using graphics for centuries, but
software programs that allow quick creation, editing, revision, and visual variations in color and symbols
have greatly aided the adoption of this tool. When done properly, mind-mapping can actually help to
stimulate the brain’s creative process and can cause people to think differently than they otherwise
would.
Mind-maps follow these general guidelines:
 Starting in the center: Having the main idea to focus on placed in the center is important because it
allows people to branch off in any direction allowing for sufficient room for multiple ideas on a
single map.
 Use colors with meaning: Most mind-maps will have at least three different colors, each with a
specific meaning. The meaning can represent anything from level of importance to type of task.
 Shapes and images: Adding different shapes or images around an idea is a great way to make further
categories on mind-maps. It can be especially effective to have an image placed along with the
central idea to invoke both the visual centers of the brain and those that are used for reading.
 Easy to follow lines: There should be clear lines from one area to each sub-area to ensure it is simple
to follow the train of thought, as well as allowing for additional ideas to be added. Many people also
suggest having thicker lines at first and slowly making them thinner as the map branches out. This is
a simple visual representation of the natural flow of ideas from the central concept out toward
those further along the map.
 Radial organization: Ideas should be organized radially off of each other to keep them organized. In
addition to allowing for the best use of space on the mind-map, it also forms an accurate picture of
how the actual brain processes evolved.
 Custom styles: Each individual can come up with their own style for mind-mapping that works best
for their specific purposes, which makes this technique extremely flexible.
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Chapter 19 – Lead User Analysis
Research findings in numerous industries such as petroleum processing, scientific instruments,
windsurfing, skateboarding, and many others commonly show that many of the most important
innovations were originally developed by users. Lead users are defined as members of a user population
who display two key characteristics:
 They have strong needs that are not met by existing market offerings.
 They are at the leading edge of important trends in a given marketplace.
The lead user construct is a characteristic that is distributed over a continuum, such as intelligence,
creativity, or technical skill. There is no natural borderline that objectively distinguishes lead users from
non-lead users. A lead user is not a general characteristic. It always refers only to a specific need and
trend. As such, an individual can be a lead user with regard to one field or design problem and have an
extremely low level of lead user awareness with regard to most other trends.
Lead User Method:
A managerial tool originally proposed by Urban and von Hippel. Used in the early stages of new product
development, it allows companies to benefit from the creative potential of lead users.
Checklist: Does a lead user project make sense?
 Is there a need for radically new product ideas and concepts in the company?
 Is it worth investing in this fuzzy front end—or does an improved input of ideas and concepts make
no difference in your company or industry?
 Are user innovations possible? Is there room for innovation at all?
 Is the lead user method more effective and efficient than alternative methods, such as
crowdsourcing or toolkits for user innovation and design?
 Does the company culture embrace necessary values such as openness to external ideas and the
willingness to discard familiar and long-held beliefs and traditions? Or is there a strong not invented
here (NIH) attitude?
 Are there prohibitive problems with secrecy or social desirability?
Four phases of the lead user method:
Phase 1: Getting Started
 Clarify the objectives and constraints of the project. A narrow focus can help keep subsequent
phases from getting lost in the complexity of later stages. However, like the character Goldilocks,
the focus needs to be just right and adjusted often as the project proceeds.
 A diverse front end team is vital to success in order to review inputs from a variety of perspectives.
Beware of the NIH syndrome.
Phase 2: Identification of major needs and trends
 The team will next identify broad customer needs as well as trends being created by lead users that
may well not be broadly known. This is where you find out where people are heading and who those
people are who are leading in that direction.
 Search all available resources: academic, business, popular press, internal data bases (i.e., customer
compliant files!) and always look at other markets, technologies, and industries for inspiration.
 It is important to keep trends in a usable database with the lead users identified for each trend. This
allows trends to be compared and ideas to be combined and synthesized.
 Try to identify 3-5 trends.
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Phase 3: Identification of lead users
 Search large databases such as customer files.
Pyramiding:
 Start by asking an individual (the starting point) to identify one or more people who have higher
levels of expertise or better information regarding the trend or attribute and ask them for names of
other such people who might be the type to adapt products to new uses, or who otherwise exhibit
the characteristics of the lead user type. Then ask the same question of the persons so identified
and continue until the best fit individual(s) have been found.
 These lead users may be in other markets or technologies. Users from analogous markets may be
characterized by the same underlying trends and might have a fresh and unbiased perspective.
 How can one recognize a lead user? There is no perfect profile but selected individuals must be
open, creative, willing to work jointly in a team with other lead users, possess sufficient verbal skills,
and willing to abide by prevailing intellectual property rules during the lead project.
Phase 4: The Lead User Workshop
 Generally, a 2- or 3-day workshop in which company members from different functional areas and
lead users participate.
 Make sure confidentiality and IP rights have been completely resolved before starting.
 Companies must behave fairly and transparently. If lead users sense that they are being exploited,
this will lead to very negative behaviors from lead users.
 Utilize a place conducive to creative development.
 The workshop should include a wide variety of activity to allow for varied inputs, cross fertilization
of ideas and concept development (i.e., How does it work? Initial marketing issue? Next steps?). This
is NOT an ideation workshop. Lead users already have ideas; you want to develop them into useable
concepts.
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Chapter 26 – Crowdsourcing
There may be some confusion about what crowdsourcing is or is not. Here are some helpful definitions
and explanations.
Contributions by Jeff Howe:
“Crowdsourcing isn’t a single strategy. It’s an umbrella term for a highly varied group of
approaches that share one obvious attribute in common: they all depend on some contribution
from the crowd.”
“Crowdsourcing represents the act of a company or institution taking a function once performed
by employees and outsourcing it to an undefined (and generally large) network of people in the
form of an open call. This can take the form of peer-production (when the job is performed
collaboratively), but is also often undertaken by sole individuals. The crucial prerequisite is the
use of the open call format and the wide network of potential laborers.”
Estellés-Arolas and Gónzalez-Ladrón-de-Guevara offer this definition:
“Crowdsourcing is a type of participative online activity in which an individual, an institution, a
non-profit organization, or company proposes to a group of individuals of varying knowledge,
heterogeneity, and number, via a flexible open call, the voluntary undertaking of a task. The
undertaking of the task, of variable complexity and modularity, and in which the crowd should
participate bringing their work, money, knowledge and/or experience, always entails mutual
benefit. The user will receive the satisfaction of a given type of need, be it economic, social
recognition, self-esteem, or the development of individual skills, while the crowd sourcer will
obtain and utilize to their advantage that which the user has brought to the venture, whose
form will depend on the type of activity undertaken.”
Crowdsourcing operates on two fundamental bases:
 The assumption that there is a global pool of talent that can be effectively tapped.
 The acknowledgment of the community allowing genuine meritocracy.
Characteristics of crowdsourcing:
 A clearly defined crowd
 The existence of a task with a clear goal
 A way of compensating the crowd for its input
 The crowd sourcer or the firm who initiates the crowdsourcing process
 A clearly defined gain for the crowd sourcer
 An online process, using the Internet
 Based on an open call
Comparing crowdsourcing to open innovation
Open innovation is focused on the innovation process itself, while crowdsourcing is targeted to many
other fields and applications. Open innovation is more related to knowledge flows between businesses,
while crowdsourcing has a wider approach including the crowd as an undetermined group of individuals.
Following the crowdsourcing approach, the crowd itself becomes a knowledge supplier for the firm.
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Comparing crowdsourcing to user innovation
The term user innovation was first used by Eric von Hippel (1986) when he observed that users are
actively participating in the development or fine tuning of many products and services, usually at the
implementation and usage stages. Ideas from users are moved back into the supply network for the
producers.
End users actively participate and contribute to the innovation process, sharing their ideas freely
with producers (free revealing) hoping to get a product fulfilling their specific needs. User innovation is a
nonlinear dimension of the innovation process, where user and market feedback is a source of novelty
for the innovating firm.
Diversity Trumps Ability Theorem states, “A randomly selected collection of problem solvers
outperforms a collection of the best individual problem solvers.”
Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing. When developing a crowdfunding strategy, critical success
factors include the careful identification of the objective as well as the following aspects:
 Target participants.
 Methodology and required resources.
 Timeline for completion.
 Incentives and compensation for participants.
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Chapter 27 – Open Innovation
This concept was introduced by Henry Chesbrough as a more flexible approach to innovation
management that would stimulate the flow of external knowledge into the company as well as the
transfer of internal know-how and technology to external parties.
Traditional innovation is often regarded as the in-house R&D processes that firms adopt. The main
argument is that for successful innovation, you need to fully control it in order to bring about innovative
products that contribute to the strategic goals of the firm.
Firms today recognized that it is nearly impossible to attract the best researchers in all relevant
disciplines and not all the smart people can work for a single firm.
Tidd and Bessant formulated four main arguments pushing for higher levels of networking for
innovation:
 Collective effectiveness: In a complex and highly competitive business environment, it is hard to
sustain support for R&D and innovation expenses -- not just for SMEs, but also for big companies.
Networking allows firms access to different external resources like expertise, equipment, and overall
know-how that has already been proven with less cost and in a shorter period.
 Collective learning: Networking not only helps firms to access expensive resources like machinery,
laboratory equipment, and technology, but it also facilitates shared learning via experience and
good practice sharing events. This brings new insight and ideas to the firms’ current and future
innovation projects.
 Joint risk-taking: Since innovation is a highly risky activity, it is very difficult for an individual firm to
undertake it alone; it impedes the development of new technologies. Joint firm collaboration
minimizes the risk for each firm and encourages them to engage in new activities. This is the logic
behind many pre-competitive consortia for risky R&D.
 Intersection of different sets of knowledge: Networking creates different relationships to be built
across knowledge frontiers and opens up the participating organizations to new stimuli and
experiences.
Open innovation brings about two types of benefits to the firm:
 First, the spin-off, licensing strategies, and the selling of business units or new ideas that do not fit
the strategic interest of the firm will increase the revenues of the firm.
 Second, firms can reduce the internal cost and risks of development; but more important, they are
open to a broader scope of opportunities and can speed up their learning processes about new
technologies, thereby making significant progress in the learning curve.
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Chapter 29 –Eureka! What insight is and How to Achieve It
It is often assumed that insight is not a process, is more magic than science, and cannot be taught or
learned. Insight can be defined as a “linking or connection between ideas in the mind.” The connections
matter more than the pieces.
Myths about insight:
 It arrives as if by magic as a complete and revealed idea, concept, product, etc.
 There is a single event, like an apple hitting your head, to bring forth insight.
Techniques to help create your own insight:
 Copy what other insightful people have already done. Keep notes, notebooks, sketch books, on
paper or technology (like drawing apps for tablets and phones) of ideas, observations, and readings
(especially reading from adjunct fields).
 Create pictures of relationships between ideas that you create, even if they seem impossible at first.
 List alternatives to your ideas – be your own critic and fountain of synthesized ideas.
 Immerse yourself in a new design problem.
Process of Insight:
 Experiences: Your own experiences and interactions with the problems help you to gain insight.
Actually doing, being present and observing, owning and using are all important to gaining better
insight.
 Recall and adaptation: Memories and information recall are critical to insight. Often you will
remember something similar that can be used to better understand what you have observed,
 Curiosity, questions, and goals: Non-algorithmic interactions are a type of exploration where
outcomes are not highly predictable. Some people call this play. It can be fun and practical to ask,
“What happens if….?”
 Parallels and differences: Find storylines, trends, products that seem to fit the design problem or do
something quite the opposite.
 Making connections: Have a need, goal, or curiosity to look for some explanation that’s not readily
apparent. Accumulate knowledge and experiences to recall and work with so that you have
elements to connect. Reinterpret or adapt things you know to fit the new situation or purpose.
Use questions to find insightful answers. Questions help us gain insight in three ways:
 Questions play a crucial role in curiosity.
 Questions help us frame the problem to focus the insight process on particular attributes or goals.
 Questions generate memory recall—remembering some idea or experience from the past.
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Types of questions:
 Questions based on attributes where you look for a specific attribute of an object, idea, concept,
organizational design, etc.
 Questions that pose the end goal without specifying the means or locking you into particular
attributes.
 Era-based questions require you to put yourself in the position of thinking about a question in a
different time or place from the one you are currently in.
Improving chance of recall:
 Indexing ideas: You can index ideas by the attributes of an object, concept or situation your own
experiences and goals. Developing index tags, key words, etc. is greatly aided by modern software.
However, a poor indexing scheme will simply be just as useless, if easier to use, as a poor scheme on
paper or index cards.
 Adapting partial connections: The more attributes and goals you can identify, the more potential
connections you can make. One way to make a connection is a substitution. Substitution is most
effective when you are substituting attributes that fulfill the same function. You can also look to
connect:
 Magnitude (the strength of a color; strength of a material; finer and finer— how thin can it get?)
 In size (How small or large can you make it?)
 In placement (Can it be worn elsewhere like on a ring or as a pendant?)
 In motion (the second hand, other moving dials, maybe it can change color with each pulse).
 Making non-obvious matches: Changes that are based on goals are deeper and less immediately
apparent. Search for new perspectives.
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Bibliography
The GISH is the main reference for this study and not cited here. The GISH has extensive citations and
readers are encouraged to go to this excellent reference to seek out the primary sources used to create
the body of knowledge. Cited here are the main additional sources used in creating this study guide. This
list is by no mean an exhaustive list of what is available in the field of design thinking.
Archer, L. B. (1979). Whatever became of Design Methodology. Design Studies, 17-20.
Dubberly, H. (2004). How do you design? A compendium of models. San Francisco, CA: Dubberly Design
Office.
Gardien, P. G. (2013). Walking the Talk:Putting Design at the Heart of Business. Desgin Management
International, 54-66.
Jim Dobbins. (1990). A Short Grandiose Theory of Design. Doblin Keeley Main Stamos.
Nussbaum, B. (2011, April 11). Fast Company. Retrieved from
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663558/design-thinking-is-a-failed-experiment-so-whats-next
Thoring, K. M. (2011). Understanding Design Thinking:A Process Model Based on Methods Engineering.
International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education , 1-6.
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